


little bit

by rain_at_dawn



Series: stars, scattered [13]
Category: SHINee
Genre: Angst, Band Fic, Complicated Relationships, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:01:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22546726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_at_dawn/pseuds/rain_at_dawn
Summary: 'Cause I would give anything, anythingTo have you as my man
Relationships: Kim Jonghyun/Lee Jinki | Onew, Lee Changsun | Lee Joon/Lee Jinki | Onew
Series: stars, scattered [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1608877
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	little bit

**Author's Note:**

> prompted by @atemjackson on Twitter
> 
> song inspo - little bit by lykke li

Jonghyun goes through the demo in his phone once again. He’s got the melody down; it’s only the lyrics that won’t fit right.

Across from him, on the coffee-table, sits a mug of jasmine tea which Kibum had brought him. It’s been forty minutes since then and it’s long gone cold. Kibum usually doesn’t grant him little favors like this, but it’s been six and a half hours since Jinki had stepped out, and the tea was supposed to soothe Jonghyun throughout all that spare time.

He already knew where Jinki was and if Kibum’s advice was anything to go by, he ought not to care so much. Not when he’d watched Jinki walk out the door, without so much as an attempt to go in for the kill, stop him from leaving entirely with a barrage of pleas and sobs. Jonghyun admits as much to himself, that he’s not above such measures.

In the past six and a half hours, he’s been checking SNS sporadically, watching for updates. He’s gone as far as Changsun’s feed, anticipating what could be unfolding with all the misplaced dread a breaking heart could bear. It’s worse than the two week-long streak of having to hear about Jinki secondhand via Changsun’s delighted anecdotes on national tv.

It’s seven minutes past twelve and there’s only so much cruelty that Jonghyun can turn over in his head. Most of it is misjudged and fairly harmless; it’s only when things don’t fit that it drives Jonghyun crazy. Crazy enough for Jinki, crazy enough for Jonghyun to pull up his contact list and hit ‘dial’ on a number he dreads having to look at.

Changsun doesn’t answer on the first, second, or third attempts, leaving Jonghyun to pick himself apart as the waiting continues. He goes straight for his own heart, pulling at its strings, trying to find exactly where it hurt. If he could, he’d rip it out himself and weigh the hurt in his own hands if only he could see, instead of feel. Dissect his pain like a surgeon would, instead of a poet.

The phone rings and as he picks slides his thumb across the screen to answer, he catches his reflection in the window that looks over the city lights, his eyes wide open and bleary through the glass.

“Yeah?”

Jonghyun swallows, hating every second that he has to beg. “Hyung, it’s me. Is… is Jinki with you?”

* * *

At this time of night, in such cold weather and under the contrast of streetlights, the stage seems set for a film noir. Around the corner, a mysterious figure would emerge, each exhale counted with a cloudy huff that escaped their lips. Instead, Jonghyun waits for a car to pull up outside the dorm, shivering in his hoodie and slippers.

He feels like a cameo in someone else’s life work; like a lover that waits hopelessly on a dock, as if this time would turn out different from the last. The least he can try to do is hold on to himself, whatever parts he hadn’t let Jinki touch.

Then the car turns up around the corner and the headlights flood him blind for a few seconds. It pulls up exactly in parallel to where he stands, the passenger-side door opens and Jinki shuffles out. Before Jonghyun can get to him, Jinki turns to the driver and flashes something that might have been a grin or grimace. The thought of both drives the knife deeper into Jonghyun.

He meets Changsun’s gaze and bows stiffly.

When Jonghyun reaches for Jinki’s arm, he meets no resistance. He has to get him upstairs like this now, loose-limbed and smelling sweetly of soju.

In the lift, Jinki comes halfway to his sense and makes an effort to stand straighter. He tries to let go of Jonghyun, just short of pushing him away, except Jonghyun tries to pull him back too. They almost struggle, they almost give in. It’s the usual steps they’re familiar with, the dance of defeat that always ends up like this.

Jonghyun gets his fingers tangled in a few strands of Jinki’s hair, grown long for the last comeback, and attempts to tuck them behind his ear. Jinki stops him in time and Jonghyun can only take in the bitter irony of them holding hands at this point. If they could traverse that same space, beyond what they’d groped for in the dark when it was down to the two of them alone in a bedroom, it might only be in a dream.

He never asks Jinki if he has fun without him. He tells himself he never has to know, if it would just remind them both of what they could have been, with or without each other, at the right time with the right person, instead of the chasm they’d fallen into in-between.

But sometimes, Jinki looks at him the way he does now. Like he’d give Jonghyun an answer, even if it’s just to return the exact same question.

* * *

Jonghyun holds Jinki’s hair back when he throws up all the soju bombs he’d chugged down with Changsun at some bar in Itaewon. He helps Jinki clean up afterwards and still tries after he’s brushed off on the way to Jinki’s room. It’s when the door finally closes on him that the weight of his own exhaustion takes over.

“I told you so.”

He looks up to find Kibum standing there, with Jonghyun’s mug of tea in his hands, and can’t bring himself to meet his eyes. The tears are building up; he wants to go to sleep, but there was always the danger that beckoned in dreams.

“Just give me a second, Bummie…”

“You’ve had more than a second. You’ve tortured yourself throughout this entire night.”

Jonghyun allows himself to be pulled away from Jinki’s door.

* * *

Jonghyun allows himself to be drawn back at the break of dawn. He hasn’t slept a wink and as he opens the door to Jinki’s room, he already knows that the other hasn’t either.


End file.
